Jay Inslee: “And the Hanford site, this is going to be a 50-year recovery effort. But some of the problems in the State of…”

“And the Hanford site, this is going to be a 50-year recovery effort. But some of the problems in the State of Washington, perhaps less known, but every bit as concerning, are water quality issues now, of some of the toxic chemicals that have been, by necessity, associated with the Department of Defense sites. And I can say without hesitation that the people of Tacoma and Federal Way and Paulsville, Washington do not believe it is necessary to allow a degradation of their drinking water standards in their kids' drinking water in order to have the most secure Nation we have. And the reason they are confident of that is they have seen the dedicated men and women of the Army and Navy work with these communities to solve these problems. So they cannot understand why this administration would come in for what appears to be simply ideological reasons and gut the protections that have assured citizens that their Federal Government is not going to let tetrachloride or some of these other heavy metals get into their drinking water. It just does not make any sense to them when we have been able to solve these problems because of the flexibility that the gentleman alluded to. So we hope that this effort will be beaten back and that the common sense that has been used, both by the Department of Defense and our local towns around this country, will prevail.”